


Monstrous Regiment

by tielan



Series: The Monstrous Regiment [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 20:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15614214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: It starts with the dream of a group of extraordinary people...





	Monstrous Regiment

**Author's Note:**

> I believe this turned up in one of the Avengers kink memes as a prompt, circa 2012-2013: _If the Avengers team were five MCU women and one man..._
> 
> I might have changed that slightly...
> 
> Also used for my Trope Bingo square in 2017: 'Role Reversal'.

**leader**

It starts with a woman who chooses to serve her country in whatever capacity they’ll allow her…

–

They used the serum on Gilmore Hodge, in spite of Dr. Erskine’s reservations.

_It is the heart that makes the hero._

Colonel Phillips won that battle – and lost his war. The serum gave Hodge the enhanced strength and power they’d wanted in a super-soldier, but what remained was hardly human.

Erskine was hit in those first precious moments, his skull cracked as Hodge laboured about him, mad and maddened. Peggy got to the doctor first, cradled his head, flinched as he patted her between the breasts once, before he patted his own chest once and his hand fell limp to his side.

She didn’t find the capsule in her jacket pocket until much later that night.

By then, it was too late for Steve, who’d been at the top of Hodge’s list of targets.

 

 

**catalyst**

It starts with a child, a pretty orphan with no-one to care what happens to her...

**-**

She remembered the dancing lessons. Step and hop and skip and stretch, turn and bow and sway and fold, slice and block and punch and kick….

In the Red Room, everything had a purpose. Even dancing classes for a little girl.

She remembered the examinations. Tests for strength and tests for flexibility. Blood tests and bone tests, injections and infusions. Memory games and spatial awareness, dimensions and threats and weapons and exits…

Natasha was trained to do things which others can’t.

She was trained to do what others won’t.

 

 

**fallen**

It starts with a loyal soldier, betrayed by her king to die at the hand of his dangerous daughter...

–

She tired of Sakaar in the end, a nameless something else drawing her onwards through the universe.

Somehow – a missed transit point, a breakdown, a supernova later – she ended up on Midgard.

Her ship set down in a little-known, non-spacefaring corner of the world, with just enough fuel to get her off and to the nearest system. There were none of the entertainments to which she was accustomed; but she’d tired of the endless whirl of drinking to forget and fighting to obliterate.

Maybe she would die in this ignored corner of the Asgardian Empire, and never have to think about what she’d lost.

But there was nothing on the planet that could kill her – nobody with the strength, nobody with the will, and after surviving so long, she wasn’t going to end it all herself. So Brunnhilde lived, as quietly as an Asgardian could among a short-lived people, with no intention to become a goddess, with no desire to be a queen.

It wouldn’t last forever of course. It didn’t have to – just long enough.

 

 

**monster**

It starts with two children yearning for vengeance.

–

Later, she discovered the experiments set off latent abilities in their genes. The miracle was not that they developed abilities, but that they had potential to do so at all.

Later, she realised what she and Pietro harnessed themselves to in the name of revenge.

Later, she learned how far she’d go, how sharply edged her abilities became without the outlet of her brother to release her rage.

In the now, she only cared that they had the opportunity to be revenged on the Butcher of America; the chance to teach Stark and his arrogant, self-absorbed nation what it meant to lose and lose and _lose—_

But if Stark didn’t die out in the desert, the man they bring back is not the man who went out. And watching him muster his strength before the cameras, even as he preens and poses in an arrogance she can see is borrowed, Wanda understood that there was no revenge to be had on this man. The universe had demanded a price of him that her wildest dreams could never have imagined.

Perhaps there  _was_ justice in the universe.

 

 

**addict**

It starts with the fiction of Tony Stark’s bodyguard.

–

Tony’s occasional appearances in public were sufficient to appease shareholders that Stark Industries remained in good hands, while the publication of exactly what Obadiah Stane was doing with the company worked as justification for the changes in direction.

At first, Pepper couldn’t bring herself to use the suit. Still, Tony kept making them, tinkering away at the modifications, showing her what they could do, how they worked. It was his sole pleasure – no women, no drinking, no partying. She wore the ‘bracelet’ only because he insisted with a visible terror that calmed when she put it on.

Then she intervened with the suit during the Hammer Industries fiasco with Ivan Vanko. Just once, something she could manage – even if the urge to put the suit on itched in her blood afterwards.

Taking the bracelet off to remove temptation was a mistake she only realised when Aldrich Killian captured her, blind to the fiction of Tony Stark, seeing her only as a trophy to mark his victory.

Rage burned in her veins, flaring hot.

–

 

 

**vessel**

It starts with curiosity.

–

A portal to another world, a man who’s fallen to Earth and struggles to comprehend his state.

Jane comes to collect him from S.H.I.E.L.D, because she feels responsible for his madness. It’s no wonder he’s struggling – she hit him with the jeep after all. She sends him off with Erik and Darcy and fills out the paperwork of bureacracy everywhere.

Walking past the plastic-sheets that shroud whatever they’re keeping here, Jane feels the thrum of something through her veins, like a resonance in her bones. She pauses in the corridor, half-turning to look in the direction of what she feels.

“Hey, Doc, this way—”

What is it that makes her brush the plastic sheets aside? That draws her though the threats of gunfire and the warnings to stop? That makes her reach for the leather-wrapped handle—

Power circles around her, an unthinkable strength that wells within her – knowledge of the universe, the fragility of life and existence, the need for balance in everything—

Mortal and immortal, she rises, and armor forms around her.

 

 

**avengers**

It starts with the dream of a group of extraordinary people...

–

“The Avengers Initiative,” says Coulson with satisfaction.

“Really?” Hill remarks from beside him at the helicarrier terminal. A sly smile pokes at the corner of her mouth. “Because I was thinking ‘ _The Monstrous Regiment_ ’.”

 


End file.
